In many present day wireless communication networks, information such as voice, text, or video is routed to mobile devices such as cellular handsets by first being sent to a function within the wireless communication network that acts as a home agent for the wireless device in the wireless communication network. The information is routed to the home agent, which acts as a distribution point to get the information to the mobile device. To get the information to the mobile device, the information must be routed to a base transmitter that is best able to communicate by radio with the mobile device. Typically these networks comprise a hierarchy of functions, with a top-level anchor point such as the home agent in an Internet-Protocol-based network, or a Global mobile switching center (GMSC) in a GSM network, or a Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) in a UMTS network, at a central point of the radio network. The top-level anchor point such as a home agent is typically coupled to a plurality of intermediate controllers that are in turn coupled to base transmitters. In a GSM network the intermediate controllers are mobile switching centers (MSCs) or base site controllers (BSCs), and in a UMTS network, the intermediate controllers could be Serving GPRS Support Nodes (SGSNs) or Radio Network Controllers (RNCs). When information is transmitted to a mobile device, it may be routed through the home agent, an intermediate controller, and a base transmitter to the mobile device. The information routing paths form what is called a bearer plane in the network, so named because the paths bear the end user information to the mobile devices.
In order to reduce the latency of delivery of new information to mobile devices, the mobile devices are typically tracked by the system even when they are in a state in which they not sending or receiving information such as voice, text, or video. This state is named the idle state in some systems. In order to perform the tracking, location databases must be kept. Presently, such databases are maintained and used by those functions that are providing the bearer plane. The bearer plane functions are normally dedicated to specific paging areas. Such an arrangement has a problem that the location database and maintenance functions have to be scaled the same as the bearer plane functions. Another problem is that the scaling of the bearer plane and location management functions in conventional systems is tightly coupled to the scales of the paging areas, so that if it is desired to increase the size of existing paging areas, it necessitates increasing the capacity of already deployed bearer plane and location management functionality.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.